Monday, June 29, 2009

It's Q&A week here at Safely Gathered In! We're interrupting our regularly scheduled posts to answer some of the great questions we got during our giveaway week in June.

Working on my long-term storage and am making great progress, but I am wondering about vitamin C...you know, I'd rather not have to worry about scurvy in the event I actually start living off of my long-term food storage food. So, what do you suggest for long-term storage of vitamin C? Thanks!!!

It's always a good idea to store multivitamins as a part of your longer-term storage (or at least with your three month supply). Multivitamins will help give you the nutrition you will need in case you are living off your food storage alone, especially if you don't have access to fresh fruits and vegetables.

I have several #10 cans of the hot chocolate mix, and I really don't care for it. Any suggestions on making it taste better?

I'll admit - I love the cannery hot chocolate mix!

You could try storing some of that powdered coffee creamer - that could help with the taste. Or, if you like peppermint, you could store things like candy canes or peppermint hard candy, and then break it up into pieces and add that to your drink. Any other suggestions from our readers? Leave a comment if you have some ideas!

I'm really curious as to how you might use canned salmon. It was on sale for a great price and I bought a half a dozen. I opened one about a week later and yuck! It had skin and bones in it and was really gross. I expected it to be more like canned tuna.

Great question - I have a few cans of salmon in my food storage, too, and I've been meaning to create a recipe with it to share on the blog. I'm really glad that you pointed out to me that there could be skin and bones - that really does sound unappealing and I'm glad I was able to check before I was halfway through my recipe.

On my last trip to the grocery store, I checked out the canned fish items and noticed that some of the canned salmon said "No skin, no bones". So yes, salmon is a GREAT food storage item - you'll just want to be sure to buy the right stuff!

Do you have a favorite bulk pasta supplier? We eat lots of pasta at our house! Sometimes it's all that our little ones want to eat. Thanks for such a great blog!! I especially enjoy the recipe tutorials.

I don't have a favorite bulk pasta supplier, but we do LOVE pasta! It's such an easy and versatile food storage item. I usually just wait for it to go on sale and stock up then.

Have you ever cooked beans WITHOUT soaking them?

I rarely soak my beans - I just don't think of it far enough in advance. Really, soaking beans only helps them cook faster. I usually just pour my beans into a pot, cover them with a few inches of water, and let them simmer for a few hours (keep an eye on them to make sure the water doesn't boil out). Then flavor them and use them however I need. Many people also cook beans in their pressure cookers, from what I hear.

What foods would you recommend in storage for sickness (eg H1N1 or other unexpected virus)? I have canned soup, jello, bananas in freezer, rice as well as usual food storage items. If all the family were really sick & no outside help available with meals, what would be nourishing and really quick & easy to prepare? Thank you!

It sounds like you have a really good idea for what food storage meals to eat in case of sickness. For me, ready-made canned soups would be the way to go. My three-month supply menu plan already incorporates lots of canned soups for the lunches - there is so much variety for those these days! You can get low-cal soups, low sodium, etc. so that it's not such a bad thing to eat them often (and remember.... if you're living off your food storage alone, the most important thing is survival). Jello, bananas, and rice sound great too. For more rice recipes, check out our recipes page and you can search by main ingredient (rice). Many of these meals are easy - just cook the rice, open a few cans of veggies, and bake. Delicious and simple.

What made you decide to start a blog on all this preparedness stuff?

Hannah - Really, there wasn't one specific event that gave me the idea to start a food storage blog. Food storage was always something in the back of my mind - you know, that thing that just kind of nags at you because you know you should be doing it, but you just keep making up excuses for why you can put it off. My excuse was that we're poor (my husband is a medical student) and we're young. I had always thought of food storage as a commandment for other people - middle age people with kids and a house and money. However, the food storage thoughts just kept nagging at me, and I decided that if I was going to do it, I needed to jump in with both feet. So, I talked to Abbie about starting a blog where we could share our food storage progress and help other people along the way. We figured that a blog would help us stay organized, and it would also keep us motivated... and it has!

Another thing to think about having on hand in storage for people who get the flu is ginger ale or 7 up plus an electrolyte replacer for children.

Also, although canned salmon can be unappetizing to look at when it has bones in it, those bones are full of calcium and are quite edible (not really crunchy exactly, but different in texture than you'd be expecting!) Salmon is a good addition to mac & cheese, fettucine or most other pasta dishes with a white sauce. It's good by itself in a salmon loaf or in little crab-cake like patties.

I make salmon patties. You don't even notice the skin and bones plus it is a good source of calcium. I add oats (food storage!) that I have made finer by putting them in the blender. I add an egg or two, some milk, salt and pepper. Super easy and nutritious.

I recently added Gatorade to my storage in case of sickness. My neice was at Primary Childrens Hospital for the Swine Flu and gatorade was what they gave her to ensure she was hydrated. You wait until a great sale comes, like .50 a bottle and you can get a lot more. Plus they are great for just those hot days when you are outside to long. I have your blog linked on my preparedness blog (plannotpanic.blogspot.com) for my area---I love having this resource and have refered to this blog often. Thanks!

Another comment about the salmon...I usually remove the larger bones & skin, but you don't need to. Just mash it up w/other ingredients and you won't even notice the bones are there. Salmon patties/loaf are very yummy and very food-storage friendly.

I love your blog! It has inspired me to create a once a month food storage program for our ward. We have a mylar bag sealer, so I pick up different items in bulk and then break it up and seal it. I see on your side bar that you reccomend having honey in your food storage. What is the easiest way to store it?

Garlic is a great thing to eat when you have the flu! If you eat some every hour, you will get over the flu very quickly. (Just put some in soup after you have heated it). Eating a bit of garlic every day during a pandemic will help prevent flu.

Countries in the world in which garlic was part of the daily diet did not have much trouble with pandemic flu in 1918.

BYU has studied garlic and found it to be a powerful antibiotic and antiviral food.

Salmon patties were a favorite when I was growing up. We would just mash it all together with an egg, form patties, and dip in corn meal. Fry in a very little oil. Dribble with a little lemon juice on your plate. Now I flavor with Lawry's, onion powder, dill and any thing else that catches my fancy that day.

Unsoaked beans will cook in your crock pot in 4 hours with a towel over the top. Pressure cookers are fast and i do use that method occasionally, but they just aren't the same!

I used to pay extra for boneless, skinless salmon. But now I open the cheaper cans into a bowl, remove the backbone/spines and the larger pieces of skin, and it's a lot more appealing that way. The cats eat the bones and skin.

I've made patties before, but we usually mix it with cream cheese and liquid smoke as a dip.

Although I've cooked beans successfully without soaking, it took a lot longer to cook, and then I read about soaking removing the anti-nutrients.

Here's what I do about the canned salmon bones (which, as others have noted, are highly nutritious): empty the contents of the can into a bowl, then pick out the bone pieces with a fork onto a cutting board. Now mash them up with the fork and return the mashed bone to the bowl with the salmon. Mix all together with your favorite recipe.